Friday, January 27, 2012
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — A CIA operative's unusual assignment inside the New York Police Department is being cut short after an internal investigation that criticized how the agency established its unprecedented collaboration with city police, The Associated Press has learned.
In its investigation, the CIA's inspector general faulted the agency for sending an officer to New York with little oversight after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and then leaving him there too long, according to officials who have read or been briefed on the inquiry. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the investigation. The CIA said last month that the inspector general cleared the agency of any wrongdoing.
The inspector general opened its investigation after a series of AP articles that revealed how the NYPD, working in close collaboration with the CIA, set up spying operations that put Muslim communities under scrutiny. Plainclothes officers known as "rakers" eavesdropped in businesses, and Muslims not suspected of any wrongdoing were put in intelligence databases.
The CIA officer cited by the inspector general for operating without sufficient supervision, Lawrence Sanchez, was the architect of spying programs that helped make the NYPD one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. The programs have drawn criticism from Muslims as well as New York and Washington lawmakers...[Full Article]
Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, intelligence, New York City, NYPD, police
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Raw Story
Despite a prohibition on spying within the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency played a key role in transforming the New York Police Department's intelligence unit into a cutting edge spy shop dedicated to gathering information on Muslims, and not just in New York.
That's according to a new report out Wednesday by The Associated Press, which claims a veteran CIA agent helped train one of the NYPD's detectives in advanced surveillance methods. They also sent an undercover agent to work in the department, the report says.
With the CIA's help, the NYPD has gathered information on cab drivers, street level food vendors, ethnic book stores, Internet cafes and even mosques, sending snoops in to listen to sermons -- all without a hint of federal, state or local oversight...[Full Article]
Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, intelligence, Muslim, NYPD, surveillance
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Sky News
An al Qaeda "assassin" accused of bombing Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan was working for British intelligence at the same time, according to leaked files.
The claim about Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili is made in secret reports on detainees at the US military's Guantanamo Bay prison camp obtained by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.
The Algerian, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003, was described by interrogators as a "facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al Qaeda"...[Full Article]
Labels: Al Qaeda, British, intelligence, WikiLeaks
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Cryptogon.com
January 6th, 2011
Via: U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (.pdf):
Ground surveillance is a mission normally performed by human assets, including Army scouts and Marine Corps Force Recon. Military leaders would like to shift this mission to unmanned systems, removing troops from harm’s way, but unmanned systems lack a capability that currently exists only in humans: visual intelligence. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is addressing this problem with Mind’s Eye, a program aimed at developing a visual intelligence capability for unmanned systems.
Humans perform a wide range of visual tasks with ease, something no current artificial intelligence can do in a robust way. They have inherently strong spatial judgment and are able to learn new spatiotemporal concepts directly from the visual experience. Humans visualize scenes and objects, as well as the actions involving those objects and possess a powerful ability to manipulate those imagined scenes mentally to solve problems. A machine-based implementation of such abilities is broadly applicable to a wide range of applications, including ground surveillance.
The joint military community anticipates a significant increase in the role of unmanned systems in support of future operations including jobs like persistent stare. By performing persistent stare, camera-equipped unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) would take scouts out of harm’s way. Such a capability, however, would not constitute a force multiplier because human analysts would have to interpret streaming video from these platforms to detect operationally significant activities. A truly transformative capability requires visual intelligence, enabling these platforms to detect operationally significant activity and report on that activity so warfighters can focus on important events in a timely manner.
DARPA has contracted with 12 research teams to develop fundamental machine-based visual intelligence: Carnegie Mellon University, Co57 Systems, Inc., Colorado State University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/CALTECH, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, SRI International, State University of New York at Buffalo, TNO (Netherlands), University of Arizona, University of California Berkeley and University of Southern California. These teams will develop a software subsystem suitable for employment on a camera for man-portable UGVs, integrating existing state of the art computer vision and AI while making novel contributions in visual event learning, new spatiotemporal representations, machine-generated envisionment, visual inspection and grounding of visual concepts.
DARPA has also contracted with three teams to develop system integration concepts: General Dynamics Robotic Systems, iRobot and Toyon Research Corporation. These teams are taking a collaborative approach to developing architectures incorporating newly-developed visual intelligence software onto a camera suitable as a payload on a man-portable UGV.
Related: Gorgon Stare
Research Credit: Matt
Labels: DARPA, intelligence, Mind's Eye, surveillance
Sunday, December 26, 2010
DEA Morphs Into Global Intelligence Organization...No Longer Just Drugs
WASHINGTON — The US Drug Enforcement Administration has grown into a global intelligence organization whose reach extends far beyond international drug trafficking, The New York Times reported.
Citing documents from the secrets website WikiLeaks, the newspaper said the DEA's operations had become so expansive the agency has had to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies...
[Full Article]Cables Portray Expanded Reach of Drug Agency
NYTimes.com
WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration has been transformed into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies, according to secret diplomatic cables...
[Full Article]
Labels: DEA, Drug Enforcement Administration, intelligence
Monday, December 20, 2010
Monitoring America / Gov't 'creating vast domestic snooping machine'
Washington Post
Nine years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, the United States is assembling a vast domestic intelligence apparatus to collect information about Americans, using the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators.
The system, by far the largest and most technologically sophisticated in the nation's history, collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, which is in charge of terrorism investigations in the United States.
Other democracies - Britain and Israel, to name two - are well acquainted with such domestic security measures. But for the United States, the sum of these new activities represents a new level of governmental scrutiny.
This localized intelligence apparatus is part of a larger Top Secret America created since the attacks. In July, The Washington Post described an alternative geography of the United States, one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it.
Today's story, along with related material on The Post's Web site, examines how Top Secret America plays out at the local level. It describes a web of 4,058 federal, state and local organizations, each with its own counterterrorism responsibilities and jurisdictions. At least 935 of these organizations have been created since the 2001 attacks or became involved in counterterrorism for the first time after 9/11...
[Full Article]Gov't 'creating vast domestic snooping machine'
The government is creating a vast domestic spying network to collect information about Americans in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequent terror plots, The Washington Post reported Monday.
The government is using for this purpose the FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators, the daily added.
The system collects, stores and analyzes information about thousands of US citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing, the report noted.
The government's goal is to have every state and local law enforcement agency in the country feed information to Washington to buttress the work of the FBI, noted the paper, which has conducted its own investigation of the matter...
[Full Article]Monitoring America: The Government’s Development Of A Vast Panopticon Spy Network
Washington Post reports on feds targeting all Americans as possible domestic extremists
Artwork: Copyright Rosin Fairfield. Reproduced with the artist’s permission.
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Monday, Dec 20th, 2010
The Washington Post today reports on the vast growing domestic spying apparatus that the federal government is using, in conjunction with the Pentagon, to target millions of law-abiding American citizens who have not been accused of any wrongdoing.
In a lengthy report entitled “Monitoring America”, the Post details how a vast centralized snooping machine is being constructed and employed by local, state and federal agencies as well as military investigators, to collect, store and analyze swathes of personal information.
Everything contained within the Post’s article has already been reported and covered in depth by this website and others in the alternative media that have consistently warned of the threat of the exponential rise of the big brother spy system over the past decade.
The report details Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano’s recent “See something, say something” campaign, which encompasses the federal government hooking up with Wal-Mart, Amtrak, major sports leagues, hotel chains and metro riders to encourage citizens to file “suspicious activity reports” if they see any activity they think could be criminal or terroristic.
The government defines a suspicious activity as “observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning related to terrorism or other criminal activity” related to terrorism.
As we reported recently, critics of the program have been literally dubbed insane by it’s coordinators, despite legitimate concerns over asking citizens to effectively spy on each other for the government.
The Washington Post report notes that such suspicious activity reports are just one piece of information being collected at the local and state levels and fed into a vast “Guardian” database via fusion centers, which ultimately connect to the FBI, the DHS and even the Department of Defense.
According to the report, the spook network includes 4,058 federal, state and local organizations.
Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cell phone numbers, insurance claims, driver’s license photographs and credit reports.
Dozens of the fusion centers were created after 9/11 to identify potential threats and “improve the way information is shared”. The centers use law enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies.
The centers have received billions in funding from the Department of Homeland Security and also work in conjunction with the military arm of the DHS, NORTHCOM.
They also have subscriptions to private information-broker services that keep records about Americans’ locations, employment history, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like.
Some of these data-brokers, such as one in Maryland called Entersect, claim to hold records about 98 percent of Americans.
The Washington Post report also details how equipment developed for use against insurgents and fighters in combat situations such as Afghanistan is now being employed by police and law enforcement agencies to collect information on the American people.
From military-grade infrared cameras, to hand-held, wireless fingerprint scanners, to facial recognition surveillance cameras, to license plate readers, to Predator drones along the borders – all are being used to snap pictures and video and record swathes of information. This will all then be fed into a giant database, cross referenced with every other piece of information collected, analyzed and stored.
This year for the first time, the FBI, the DHS and the Defense Department are able to search each other’s fingerprint databases, said Myra Gray, head of the Defense Department’s Biometrics Identity Management Agency, speaking to an industry group recently. “Hopefully in the not-too-distant future,” she said, “our relationship with these federal agencies – along with state and local agencies – will be completely symbiotic.”
The justification is, as always, the war on terror, but the targets of the information gathering are everyday Americans.
As the Washington Post report also notes, Homeland Security and its state and local partners have routinely targeted peaceful and lawful groups and individuals as part of its surveillance reporting.
As we have seen from the MIAC report, DHS spying on tea Party and second amendment activists in Pennsylvania and a host of other examples in recent years, the federal government has little interest in Muslim extremists and has instead targeted Americans knowledgeable of their rights and critical of big government as the primary domestic terror threat. The feds have defined “terrorist propaganda” as any material critical of the state. The Department of Defense characterizes peaceful protest as “low level terrorism” in its own report.
Over the years we have seen countless instances of unaccountable government and military programs that have been in operation for decades, all centered around covertly spying and gathering information on American citizens.
We have extensively documented such programs from COINTELPRO through to Operation CHAOS, the Defense Department’s Counterintelligence Field Activity and the recent NSA warrantless wiretapping.
Large corporations such as Google, AT&T, Facebook and Yahoo to name but a few are also intimately involved in the overarching program. Those corporations have specific government arms that are supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information.
We are now witnessing the coordination and mass consolidation of scores of these operations into one all encompassing panopticon program.
After 9/11 the work of 16 different intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the giant National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on international communications, as well as the Energy Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration was centralized under the office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Why such rampant centralization? Why is the military now so intent on fusing itself with the federal government via Homeland security and through the FBI and why are the targets of their operations always American citizens?
We are constantly bombarded with the notion that the biggest threat we face is from those who reject and abhor western values, yet the government and military continue to relentlessly focus their anti-terror activity directly upon freedom loving American people, while telling them they would be completely insane to voice any concern.
——————————————————————
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor at Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and regular contributor to Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.
Labels: big brother, FBI, intelligence, privacy, Steve Watson, surveillance
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
For decades, investigative journalists, researchers and analysts have noted the symbiotic relationships forged amongst international drug syndicates, neofascists and U.S. intelligence agencies, documenting the long and bloody history of U.S. complicity in the global drugs trade.
While the United States has pumped billions of dollars into failed drug eradication schemes in target countries through ill-conceived programs such as Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative, in the bizarro world of the "War on Drugs," corporate interests and geopolitics always trump law enforcement efforts to fight organized crime, particularly when the criminals are partners in crimes perpetrated by the secret state.
Since 2006, when Mexican President Felipe Calderón turned the Army loose, allegedly to "dismantle" the drug cartels slowly transforming Mexico into a killing field some 28,000 people, primarily along Mexico's northern border with the U.S., have lost their lives. Countless others have been wounded, forced to flee or simply "disappeared."
Writing in The Guardian, journalist Simon Jenkins tells us that "cocaine supplies routed through Mexico have made that country the drugs equivalent of a Gulf oil state."
"Rather than try to stem its own voracious appetite for drugs," Jenkins writes, "rich America shifts guilt on to poor supplier countries. Never was the law of economics--demand always evokes supply--so traduced as in Washington's drugs policy. America spends $40bn a year on narcotics policy, imprisoning a staggering 1.5m of its citizens under it."
Judging the results, one might even think the drug war solely exists as the principle means through which wealthy elites organize crime...
[Full Article]Labels: drugs, intelligence, Mexico, United States
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Israeli Mossad Impersonates U.S. Intelligence Agents
by Jeff Stein
WashingtonPost.com
The CIA took an internal poll not long ago about friendly foreign intelligence agencies.
The question, mostly directed to employees of the clandestine service branch, was: Which are the best allies among friendly spy services, in terms of liaison with the CIA, and which are the worst? In other words, who acts like, well, friends?
“Israel came in dead last,” a recently retired CIA official told me the other day.
Not only that, he added, throwing up his hands and rising from his chair, “the Israelis are number three, with China number one and Russia number two,” in terms of how aggressive they are in their operations on U.S. soil.
Israel’s undercover operations here, including missions to steal U.S. secrets, are hardly a secret at the FBI, CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. From time to time, in fact, the FBI has called Israeli officials on the carpet to complain about a particularly brazen effort to collect classified or other sensitive information, in particular U.S. technical and industrial secrets.
The most notorious operation employed Jonathan Pollard, the naval intelligence analyst convicted in 1987 and sentenced to life in prison for stealing tens of thousands of classified documents for Israel.
One of Israel’s major interests, of course, is keeping track of Muslims who might be allied with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, or Iran-backed Hezbollah, based in Lebanon.
As tensions with Iran escalate, according to former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, “Israeli agents have become more aggressive in targeting Muslims living in the United States as well as in operating against critics.”
“There have been a number of cases reported to the FBI about Mossad officers who have approached leaders in Arab-American communities and have falsely represented themselves as ‘U.S. intelligence,’ ” Giraldi wrote recently in American Conservative magazine.
“Because few Muslims would assist an Israeli, this is done to increase the likelihood that the target will cooperate. It’s referred to as a ‘false flag’ operation.”
Giraldi’s piece continued, “Mossad officers sought to recruit Arab-Americans as sources willing to inform on their associates and neighbors. The approaches, which took place in New York and New Jersey, were reportedly handled clumsily, making the targets of the operation suspicious.”
“These Arab-Americans turned down the requests for cooperation,” Giraldi added,”and some of the contacts were eventually reported to the FBI, which has determined that at least two of the Mossad officers are, ironically, Israeli Arabs operating out of Israel’s mission to the United Nations in New York under cover as consular assistants.”
“Oh, sure, they do that,” the other former CIA official said, waving a dismissing hand, when I asked about Giraldi’s story. “They’re all over the place.”
The FBI did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
But a retired senior FBI counterintelligence official told SpyTalk, "They have always been extremely aggressive, and seem to feel they can operate whenever and wherever they want, in spite of being called on the carpet more than any other country by probably a factor of three times as often."
A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, which routinely denies accounts of Mossad operations on U.S. soil, could not be immediately reached for comment.
The former CIA official, who discussed such sensitive matters only on the condition of anonymity, echoed the views of other U.S. intelligence sources I’ve talked to over the years about Israeli operations in the United States.
They don’t begrudge the Jewish state’s interest in keeping track of its potential or real enemies, including here -- indeed, they often say Israel is America’s best friend in the Middle East.
Which, they say, makes Mossad’s impersonation of U.S. intelligence agents all the more galling.
Labels: intelligence, Israel, Mossad
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Censorship ongoing, the free internet is under sustained attack
Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Tuesday, Jul 20th, 2010
The ongoing saga with Google censorship has continued today as it emerged that once again the search engine giant removed a key term from it’s trends pages.
Alex Jones yesterday asked his readers and listeners to send the term ‘Google spies’ to the top of the trends charts in the latest effort to fight back against the company’s censorship of his films on YouTube.
The term related to a story we prepared detailing how Google is intimately linked with U.S. intelligence and has a history of censorship and surveillance.
Within a short time the term had hit the top spot with the “volcanic” status added (see below – click for enlargement).
As you can see, the effect of the term being pushed to the top of the trends charts is that bloggers and journalists pick up the story and begin to document it. A snowball effect ensues and millions of people all over the world are more likely to be directed toward the story.
However, within half an hour the term had been completely removed by Google and resulted in no news story links. These actions replicated Google’s activity in the days beforehand when it removed other terms such as ‘The Obama Deception’, ‘Infowars’, ‘Fall of the Republic’ and ‘Google Censorship’ – which had all become some of the most searched topics on the internet.
This is the epicentre of the infowar. Events over the past couple of days have shown that you, our readers, have the power to take the issues we cover and literally make them the widest read items on the internet.
Today we urge you to search the term ‘Google Launches Cover Up’ to make this article one of the most widely read on the internet.
Top Secret America
In the week that the Washington Post published it’s ‘Top Secret America’ piece, a two year study that reveals how the intelligence community has explosively expanded, there is an increased focus on the spook networks in the U.S. and the implications for that has for liberty.
Below is a set of links to previous articles we have produced intricately detailing how Google is intrinsically tied to the U.S. government intelligence apparatus and how there is a huge ongoing coordinated program of attack on the open internet being conducted by the shadow government and its mega corporation bedfellows:
Google’s Intelligence Links:
Google Re-establishes Relationship With Government Spies
Group Calls for Hearings Into Google’s Ties to CIA and NSA
Former Intelligence Agent Says Google In Bed With CIA
Ex-Agent: CIA Seed Money Helped Launch Google
Report: Google Seeking To Cut Net Censorship Deals
CIA and Google Team Up Again For More Spying
Google Caught In Terror Storm Censorship
Google Video Caught Censoring Loose Change?
Google Censors Another 9/11 Documentary
Google: More People Will Die From Swine Flu If We Cannot Retain Search Data
The War On The Free Internet:
The Lights Are Going Out For Free Speech On The Internet
New Bill Gives Obama ‘Kill Switch‘ To Shut Down The Internet
Obama Can Shut Down Internet For 4 Months Under New Emergency Powers
Former Director Of National Intelligence Calls For “Re-Engineering” The Internet
Lieberman’s Model For America: Purging The Internet of Dissent
Lieberman: China Can Shut Down The Internet, Why Can’t We?
Feds Ignore Due Process, First Amendment, Shut Down Thousands of Blogs
Death Of The Internet: Censorship Bills In UK, Australia, U.S. Aim To Block “Undesirable” Websites
Academics, Politicians: Pending Global Treaty Threatens Free Internet, Fundamental Rights
White House Mapping Internet Users’ Data For Mass Archives
Pentagon Secretly Goes To War With The Internet
Labels: Google, intelligence
Monday, July 19, 2010
'The complexity of this system defies description'
WASHINGTON — Since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, top-secret intelligence gathering by the government has grown so unwieldy and expensive that no-one really knows what it costs and how many people are involved, The Washington Post reported Monday.
A two-year investigation by the newspaper found what it called a "Top Secret America" that's hidden from public view and largely lacking in oversight.
The newspaper's investigation is based on hundreds of interviews with intelligence, military and other officials, as well as public documents and records.
In its first installment of a series of reports, the Post said there are now more than 1,200 government organizations and more than 1,900 private companies working on counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in some 10,000 locations across the U.S.
Approximately 854,000 people — or nearly 1 1/2 times the number of people who live in Washington — have top-secret security clearance, the paper said...
Labels: intelligence
Sunday, May 16, 2010
WASHINGTON — Top military officials have continued to rely on a secret network of private spies who have produced hundreds of reports from deep inside Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to American officials and businessmen, despite concerns among some in the military about the legality of the operation.
Earlier this year, government officials admitted that the military had sent a group of former Central Intelligence Agency officers and retired Special Operations troops into the region to collect information — some of which was used to track and kill people suspected of being militants. Many portrayed it as a rogue operation that had been hastily shut down once an investigation began.
But interviews with more than a dozen current and former government officials and businessmen, and an examination of government documents, tell a different a story. Not only are the networks still operating, their detailed reports on subjects like the workings of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan and the movements of enemy fighters in southern Afghanistan are also submitted almost daily to top commanders and have become an important source of intelligence...
Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, intelligence, special operations
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
BANGOR, Maine -- The father of a former Air Force intelligence specialist was left to wonder why his son went from leading a "squeaky clean" life to being accused of claiming he had explosives aboard a trans-Atlantic flight, forcing the jetliner and its passengers to spend the night in Bangor.
Delta Air Lines Flight 273 from Paris to Atlanta was diverted to Maine because the passenger said he had a fake passport and explosives aboard the plane, U.S. officials said. The passport was real, law enforcement officials said, but there were no explosives on the Airbus A330.
The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing.
Richard Stansberry was perplexed after government officials told him that his son, Derek Stansberry, 26, of Riverview, Fla., had been detained Tuesday at Bangor International Airport.
"My son's profession in the military required he live a squeaky clean life," Richard Stansberry said.
In Washington, Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Col. Linda Pepin said the man detained on Flight 273 was a senior airman and worked as an intelligence specialist. She said he was on active duty from June 2005 to 2009 and was last stationed at Hurlburt Field, Fla.
Charde Houston, an all-star forward for the WNBA's Minnesota Lynx, was on the flight. She said she saw no clues on the handcuffed man's face as he was led off the plane on Tuesday.
"He looked extremely calm, like a blank face. No emotion," Houston said...
Labels: Airbus, Delta, Derek Stansberry, explosives, intelligence, Maine, U.S. Air Force
Monday, March 22, 2010
Chinese media organs lashed out at Google (GOOG) in an apparently coordinated assault on Saturday -- with one paper suggesting Google is linked to the U.S. intelligence agencies -- just days before the Web giant may announce plans to close its Chinese-language search engine.
The attacks -- which came in the form of media commentaries -- came one day after a Chinese business newspaper said Google would on Monday announce plans to close its search engine on April 10...
Labels: China, Google, intelligence
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Richard Pollock, leading the charge at Campus Watch — an organization founded by the neocon and Islamophobe Daniel Pipes — notes a meeting held last month between Homeland Security Secretary’s Janet Napolitano and “a select group of Muslim, Arab, and Sikh organizations,” including the Muslim Brotherhood.
 | |
 | |
| The Muslim Brotherhood was groomed early on by British intelligence and the CIA. . | |
According to Pollock, Napolitano spent an hour and a half briefing them on DHS counter-radicalization and anti-terrorist programs...
Labels: DHS, intelligence, neocon
Thursday, February 18, 2010
CIA Says OK for Agents to Moonlight for Private Clients
James Bond, meet Fred Rustmann. A former CIA agent, Rustmann now runs a "corporate intelligence" firm that helps companies spy on each other. Like many veterans of the Central Intelligence Agency, Rustmann's spying tricks are in high demand by the private sector.
When one of Rustmann's clients wants to find out about, say, its competitors' upcoming product line-ups, it pays him to conduct undercover interviews with unsuspecting employees and dig through their garbage...
Labels: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, intelligence, spying, surveillance
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Transportation Security Administration plan aims to help its officers spot terrorists by giving them more detailed information about tactics and threats, TSA officials and security experts said. The agency, viewed by some as throngs of workers pawing through luggage at checkpoints, hopes to empower its higher-level workers as part of an effort to professionalize airport security.
The 10,000 people in line to get classified information are managers, supervisors and "behavior detection officers" who roam airports looking for suspicious people. They represent about 20% of the TSA's airport workforce and exclude screeners who scan passengers and bags...
Labels: intelligence, TSA
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
WASHINGTON -- Al Qaeda can be expected to attempt an attack on the United States in the next three to six months, senior U.S. intelligence officials told Congress Tuesday.
The terrorist organization is deploying operatives to the United States to carry out new attacks from inside the country, including "clean" recruits with a negligible trail of terrorist contacts, CIA Director Leon Panetta said. Al Qaeda is also inspiring homegrown extremists to trigger violence on their own, Panetta added.
The annual assessment of the nation's terror threats provided no startling new terror trends, but amplified growing concerns since the Christmas Day airline attack in Detroit that militants are growing harder to detect and moving more quickly in their plots...
Labels: Al Qaeda, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, intelligence, Leon Panetta, Panetta, terrorism
Monday, January 11, 2010
The CIA had 25 agents in Germany after the September 11 attacks and planned to "rendition" illegally al-Qaeda suspects without informing the German government, Spiegel magazine reported Sunday.
"It was about grabbing people without the Germans knowing about it," the German weekly magazine cited an unnamed former CIA agent as saying. "We were planning stuff that was totally illegal."
The plan went so far that other parts of the Central Intelligence Agency were in the loop, but in the end it was scrapped because of objections by the agency's German section, Spiegel cited its source as saying...
Labels: CIA, intelligence, rendition
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